Themes are fundamental and sometimes universal ideas that are explored in literary work. The loss of innocence is one of the different themes of Fallen Angels. The title of the novel immediately emphasizes the theme of innocence and youth. As Lieutenant Carroll explains in Chapter 4, all soldiers are “angel warriors,” because most of the soldiers are still young boys and still as innocent as angels. By naming the novel Fallen Angels, Walter Dean Myers suggests that the soldiers’ innocence and youth are some of the most important aspects and can be more important than their religion, ethnicity, class, or race. The novel is foremost a tale of a loss of innocence in a squad of soldiers in the Vietnam War. Richie enters Vietnam at seventeen years old, and the other members of the squad including Peewee are also teenagers. Peewee is incapable of growing a mustache. His three life goals are to drink wine from a corked bottle, smoke a cigar, and become in love with a foreign woman. Both Richie and Lobel are virgins, and they fantasize about their first sexual experiences. Even though the soldiers join the war as naive youths, the war rapidly changes them and they develop into young men. Surrounded by death, the boys are bound to foresee the fragility of their own lives and are stripped of the carelessness and brazenness of youth. The dreadful horrors around the boys bound them to consider a world that does not accommodate to their childish and simplistic view. They want to only see a separation between what is right and what is wrong, they instead find moral doubt. Where they had wanted to see order and meaning, they only found senselessness and disorder. Where they wanted to find heroism, they only found the selfish instinct of self-preservation. These realizations destroyed the innocence of the boys, maturing and thrusting them into their manhood. The second theme is the unromantic reality of war. Richie and most other soldiers enter the war with illusions about what the war will be like. Like most other civilians, he learned what war is from movies he watched and stories that he heard and they portray battles as heroic and glorious, the army being organized and efficient, and the warfare depending on skills and
During war, many people change physically, mentally, and socially. War itself is disturbing to the mind. In Walter Dean Meyer’s Fallen Angels, the characters undergo many changes as they learn the true meaning of war. Perry, Peewee and Johnson all change in the sense of their personalities and their outlooks on life. In the beginning of the novel all the characters have very distinct characteristics. As the story progresses they start to see how war can have a huge impact on your life.
To be engaged in war is to be engaged in an armed conflict. Death is an all too ordinary product of war. It is an unsolicited reward for many soldiers that are fighting for their country’s own fictitious freedom. For some of these men, the battlefield is a glimpse into hell, and for others, it is a means to heaven. Many people worry about what happens during war and what will become of their loved ones while they’re fighting, but few realize what happens to those soldiers once they come home. The short stories "Soldier's Home” by Ernest Hemingway and "Speaking of Courage” by Tim O'Brien explore the thematic after effects of war and how it impacts a young person's life. Young people who
Chapter 2 sums up the war in a different fashion, showing the contrast between the uselessness of past knowledge and the “raw and emotional skills necessary” in the trenches (20). The duties imposed on the camp by Corporal Himmelstoss symbolize the hours of work and duties done before enlistment that mean nothing during the war. Being “put through every conceivable refinement of parade ground soldiering” shows how schoolbook tasks were diligently performed only for fear of how society would perceive the boys if they were to do otherwise (26). Himmelstoss himself is the embodiment of previous responsibilities that only make the men “howl with rage” at present (26). The death of Kemmerich goes hand in hand with the death of innocence, Kemmerich’s shiny boots being the small glimpse of hope that keeps the men going. Baumer receives saveloy, hot tea, and rum from Muller for salvaging the boots. In return for giving Muller a sense of hope, Baumer receives a more needed sense of comfort and satisfaction. His hunger, one “greater than comes from the belly alone” (33), is thus satisfied. Chapter 7 directly reinforces this transition from an old life into a new one. Baumer “feels an attraction” to the
The topic of war is hard to imagine from the perspective of one who hasn't experienced it. Literature makes it accessible for the reader to explore the themes of war. Owen and Remarque both dipcik what war was like for one who has never gone through it. Men in both All Quiet on the Western Front and “Dulce Et Decorum” experience betrayal of youth, horrors of war and feelings of camaraderie.
“Fallen Angels”, written by Walter Dean Myers, is a novel that tells about the story of young boys going into battle during the Vietnam War. There are many themes in “Fallen Angels” but the main theme is the loss of innocence. The title makes reference to these themes. And the boys in the book have dreams of losing their virginity and drinking alcohol for the first time. They are thrown into a harsh reality when they are shown the trials of war. In the end, they understand that the movies that depict heroicness and honor are just images of a false idea; that war is full of chaos and horror.
The rise of World War I caused millions of casualties and was yet another demonstration of how supposedly civilized nations could be led into a chaotic war of power over lands and people. Since the beginning of civilization, war has been the way of the world. However, with major advances in technology, this idea of war has since become mechanized and deadlier. There is no doubt that the powerful men who lead wars often don’t care to think of nitty gritty of war, to them, rather, it’s a matter of power and legacy. In Remarque’s novel, the particular story of Paul and his comrades is a perfect example of how a generation can be used and manipulated to drive the agenda of power- hungry men. Through Remarque’s own personal experience and unparalleled writing ability, this novel presents many first-hand experiences into the living conditions of soldiers and peoples.
Walter Dean Myers historical novel, Fallen Angels takes place in Vietnam during the war. The main character Perry, recently enlisted in the army, to fight in the Vietnam war. Perry could not afford to go to college because of his rough childhood in Harlem, also growing up with no dad. He faces many problems throughout war even when he is homesick for his family in the beginning. One of the closest warriors and his bestfriend he finds in the army is Peewee a very experienced veteran who is a great leader. Perry and his fellow warriors have to fend off the Vietnamese and use determination to win the war. The theme expressed in this story is that personal experiences enable people to mature.
20) O’Brien tells how these young men were drafted which were constantly in fear, they wished to be there obliviously but war takes up all of one’s attention; it played a big role in their life, changing their tactics, personality and becoming a new person. O’Brien uses this to show the stressful moments in war where one has pressure to be alive and in this case to fit in with everyone else and feel part of something, in a lonely place such as the war.
It is often said that loss of innocence is an essential part of the process of growing up. Usually, it is a personal experience, happening at unique rates for every individual; however, time and time again a case occurs where this change is experienced collectively. Timothy Findley’s novel, The Wars, tells the story of such an occurrence. The reader witnesses the horrors of the First World War through the eyes of Robert Ross, a young man who enlists in the army to escape a troubled home life. Along with several companions he meets during his tour of duty, Robert is subjected to a sequence of events that cause them all to realize that the world is a much uglier place than they had known it to be. Following his first kill in the trenches and
was not the truth. This book showed the harsh reality of war that most people
The innocence of a human drastically transforms when they are placed in a war. Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road shows the changing innocence of a man in war through the motif of consumption in the novel. This motif is seen consistently in the form of words such as eating and feeding. There are two clear perspectives shown from this, one that takes away innocence and one that gives or repairs innocence. Boyden uses the motif of consumption to display how the innocence of a person can be changed through war and the role culture plays on one’s innocence.
The novel “All Quiet on the Western Front” has many images of war and truly demonstrates the horrors the soldiers experienced. The author constantly provides surreal scenes that make the reader stop and think about how terrible the war was. One image that lingers in my mind is from the beginning when the young recruit lost his helmet and when Paul tried to help him and put it back on his head the boy hugged him. War is happening all around them and Paul shows deep sympathy towards the young boy. The reader cannot help but feel for the young boy and picture him just wanting the comfort of another. Another surreal image that lingers in my mind is when Paul is on leave and loses all feeling and power when he sees his sister and home. He starts
The story “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien is an enormously detailed fictional account of a wartime scenario in which jimmy Cross (the story’s main character) grows as a person, and the emotional and physical baggage of wartime are brought to light. The most obvious and prominent feature of O’Brien’s writing is a repetition of detail. O’brien also passively analyzes the effects of wartime on the underdeveloped psyche by giving the reader close up insight into common tribulations of war, but not in a necessarily expositorial sense.. He takes us into the minds of mere kids as they cope with the unbelievable and under-talked-about effects or rationalizing
In this essay, I will discuss how Tim O’Brien’s works “The Things They Carried” and “If I Die in a Combat Zone” reveal the individual human stories that are lost in war. In “The Things They Carried” O’Brien reveals the war stories of Alpha Company and shows how human each soldier is. In “If I Die in a Combat Zone” O’Brien tells his story with clarity, little of the dreamlike quality of “Things They Carried” is in this earlier work, which uses more blunt language that doesn’t hold back. In “If I Die” O’Brien reveals his own personal journey through war and what he experienced. O’Brien’s works prove a point that men, humans fight wars, not ideas. Phil Klay’s novel “Redeployment” is another novel that attempts to humanize soldiers in war. “Redeployment” is an anthology series, each chapter attempts to let us in the head of a new character – set in Afghanistan or in the United States – that is struggling with the current troubles of war. With the help of Phil Klay’s novel I will show how O’Brien’s works illustrate and highlight each story that make a war.
War forces young soldiers to grow up quickly. In Stephen Crane’s Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming is no exception. He is faced with the hard reality of war and this forces him to readjust his romantic beliefs about war. Through the novel, the reader can trace the growth and development of Henry through these four stages: (1) romanticizing war and the heroic role each soldier plays, (2) facing the realities of war, (3) lying to himself to maintain his self-importance, and (4) realistic awareness of his abilities and place in life. Through Henry’s experiences in his path to self-discovery, he is strongly affected by events that help shape his ideology of war, death,